Monday, June 29, 2009

Gee, you sure cite Wikipedia a lot

Why yes, yes I do.

Here's my reasoning: in high school and college, we talked about MLA style and AP style and Yo Grandma's Style and whatever else. And I remember that even though the styles varied wildly, the biggest no-no was wishy-washyness. Pick one and stick with it, that's what I was taught.

If you're curious: in high school and today, for better or worse, I have picked MLA style. Unfortunately, I have an outdated book, but still, that's what I fall back on.

So in the spirit of just picking, I have chosen Wikipedia as my first go-to if I need an outside source. It was a conscious choice for particular reasons: Wikipedia is inclusive, you can almost always find something useful and pertinent, and I believe the information is posted on Wikipedia is posted good faith. Maybe they're not always correct, maybe they are . . . I don't really care. But I do believe in accuracy via consistency. Yes, I could probably do more research when blogging, and I'm sure if I did I would find Wikipedia-conflicting answers. But I think usually it will just be a potayto-potahto argument, and I'm not really interested in splitting hairs as much as I'm interested in rambling on about my own thoughts.

My own thoughts. Of which--may I remind you?--Wikipedia and Yahoo! and Dogpile and any of the other thousands of places that I coulda-woulda-shoulda gone for information have no clue.

No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails